Richard Montgomery
Richard Montgomery was an Irish-born American army officer. First serving in the British Army, he later became a major general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. On 31 December 1775, Montgomery was killed while leading an unsuccessful invasion of Quebec.
Montgomery was born and raised in Ireland to an Ulster-Scots family. In 1754, he enrolled at Trinity College Dublin, and two years later joined the British army and served in the French and Indian War. He steadily rose through the ranks, serving in North America and the West Indies. After the war he was stationed at Fort Detroit during Pontiac's War, following which he returned to Britain for health reasons. In 1773, Montgomery returned to the Thirteen Colonies, married Janet Livingston, and began farming.
When the Revolutionary War broke out, Montgomery joined the Patriot cause, and was elected to the New York Provincial Congress in May 1775. In June 1775, he was commissioned as a Brigadier general in the Continental Army. After Philip Schuyler became too ill to lead the invasion of Quebec, Montgomery took over. He captured Fort St. Jean and Montreal in November 1775, and then advanced to Quebec City, where he joined another force under the command of Benedict Arnold. On 31 December, he led an attack on the city, but was killed during the battle. The British found his body and gave him an honorable burial. His remains were moved to New York City in 1818.
Early life
Montgomery was born at Feltrim, near the County Dublin town of Swords, on 2 December 1738. He was born into an Ulster Scots gentry family, the County Donegal branch of the Clan Montgomery. His father, Thomas Montgomery, was a British Army officer and a Member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Lifford in east Donegal, which returned two MPs to the Irish Parliament. Thomas' brother Alexander Montgomery and cousin, another Alexander Montgomery, were both colonels and MPs for County Donegal.Richard Montgomery spent most of his childhood at Abbeville House in Kinsealy, near Swords, in County Dublin, where he learned to hunt, ride, shoot, and fence. Thomas Montgomery made sure that his sons received a good education; Richard attended the school of the Rev. Saumarez Dubourdieu in Leixlip, and learned French, Latin, and rhetoric. Richard Montgomery entered Trinity College Dublin in 1754.
Despite his great love of knowledge, Montgomery did not receive a degree. He was urged by his father and his oldest brother Alexander to join the military, which he did on 21 September 1756. His father purchased an ensign's commission for Montgomery, who joined the 17th Regiment of Foot.
Seven Years War
North America
On 3 February 1757, the 17th Foot was ordered to march from its garrison at Galway and prepare to be deployed overseas. On 5 May, Montgomery and the 17th Foot sailed from Cork for Halifax, Nova Scotia, arriving in July. The British had planned an attempt on Louisbourg but the operation was called off, and they sailed instead for winter quarters in New York. In 1758, the 17th Foot was sent back to Halifax, once again with the goal of taking Louisbourg.The British commanders, Jeffery Amherst and James Abercromby drew up a plan to assault the French at Louisbourg, which is located on the Atlantic coast of Cape Breton Island, north of Halifax. The French garrison consisted of only 800 men, while the British force had 13,142 troops supported by 23 ships of the line and 13 frigates. On 8 June 1758, the attack on the fort began. Montgomery landed on the beach under heavy fire and ordered his troops to advance with fixed bayonets. The outer French defenses withdrew back toward the city. Montgomery's unit and the rest of the British force chased the French back to a point just outside the Fort's guns. At this point, the British prepared to besiege the city. Due to bad weather, artillery and other materials needed for the siege took several weeks to arrive onshore. Montgomery had his men dig entrenchments and build breastworks, also ordering his men stay alert to the possibility of a French attack. On 9 July, the French attempted a breakout, but it failed. On 26 July, following a series of actions resulting in the destruction of most their fleet, the French surrendered. General Amherst was impressed by Montgomery's action during the siege, and promoted him to lieutenant.
On 8 July 1758, James Abercromby attacked Fort Carillon on Lake Champlain, but was repelled with heavy losses. In August, Montgomery and the 17th foot sailed to Boston, marched to join with Abercromby's forces in Albany and then moved to Lake George. On 9 November, Abercromby was recalled; Amherst replaced him as commander-in-chief. The British high command, for the 1759 campaign, developed a plan for a three-pronged attack into Canada, in which forces including the 17th foot would assault Fort Carillon and also capture Fort St. Frédéric, near Crown Point, New York. Under Amherst's command, Montgomery and the 17th Foot participated in the capture of Fort Carillon. While the army was gathering prior to the battle, Montgomery's company was on guard duty; he ordered his men to remain vigilant for French and Indian ambush parties. On 9 May his suspicions proved correct when 12 men from the 17th were attacked. Montgomery and the 17th met stiff resistance at first. Montgomery ordered that his men were not to fire at night, fearing they would shoot their comrades. On 21 July, the army began its movement toward Fort Carillon; by the 26th they were in position outside the fort's walls, from which the French had already withdrawn most of their forces to Fort St. Frédéric. That night, after some exchange of cannon fire during the day, the French blew up Carillon's powder magazine, and Fort St. Frédéric the next day, and withdrew to the far end of Lake Champlain.
The 17th, which was placed under the command of Major General Robert Monckton late in 1759, spent the winter on garrison duty in the Mohawk River valley. On 15 May 1760, Monckton named Montgomery as regimental adjutant, a position awarded by the commanding officer to the most promising lieutenant in the regiment. In August, the 17th Foot joined with the Lake Champlain Division, and set out from Crown Point to participate in a three-pronged attack on Montreal. The 17th Foot captured the Île aux Noix and Fort Chambly before meeting with the two other divisions outside Montreal. The marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnial, the governor of Canada, seeing that the city could not be defended, surrendered the city without a fight. With the fall of Montreal, all of Canada fell into British hands. In the summer of 1761, Montgomery and the 17th Foot marched from Montreal to Staten Island.
Caribbean
After conquering Canada, the British government put together a plan to defeat the French in the West Indies. In November 1761, Montgomery and the 17th set sail for Barbados, where they joined other units from North America. On 5 January 1762, the force left Barbados and headed towards the French island of Martinique, arriving there in mid-January. The French, having received word of an impending attack, had built up their defenses. A beachhead was quickly established, and the main offensive began on 24 January. The French outer defenses were overrun and the survivors fled to the capital, Fort Royal. The British prepared to launch an assault on the fort, but the French, seeing the situation was hopeless, surrendered. On 12 February, the entire island surrendered. After the fall of Martinique, the rest of the French West Indies, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent, fell to the British without a fight. On 6 May 1762, in reward for his actions in Martinique, Lieutenant Colonel John Campbell promoted Montgomery to captain and gave him command of one of the ten companies of the 17th Foot.Spain entered the war in 1761 as an ally of France. The British high command believed that capturing Havana would destroy the lines of communication from Spain to its colonial empire. On 6 June, the assaulting British forces arrived seven miles off the shore of Havana. The 17th Foot, including Montgomery's company, was to capture Moro Fort, the key to the Spanish defense of the city. British battleships bombarded the fort, silencing all but two Spanish guns. On 30 July, Montgomery and the 17th Foot stormed and captured the fort. In late August 1762, Montgomery and the 17th Foot were sent to New York, where they remained for the rest of the war. The conflict was ended by the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763.
Pontiac's War
Angered by the French surrender and unhappy with British policies that affected them, an Ottawa chief, Pontiac, organized 18 Native American tribes that attacked British military and civilian settlements beginning in April 1763. The tribes captured eight British forts and forced the evacuation of two more. General Amherst ordered the 17th to Albany in June 1763 to assist in combating the outbreak of hostilities.En route to Albany, the ship carrying Montgomery up the Hudson River ran aground near Clermont Manor, seat of the politically powerful Livingston family. While the ship was refloated, the Livingstons played host to the ship's officers. Montgomery met Robert Livingston's 20-year-old daughter Janet. We do not know what happened between them at this time, but Janet noticed that Montgomery was not with the regiment when it returned to New York.
The 17th was first assigned to garrison duty at Fort Stanwix, where Montgomery remained until 1764. In 1764, Montgomery applied to Colonel Campbell and General Thomas Gage for leave to return to England; his service in the Caribbean had taken a toll on his health. Gage granted the leave, directing Colonel Campbell to approve the leave as soon as possible. Campbell, whose subordinate officers had been depleted in the Caribbean campaign, would grant the leave only after the upcoming expedition.
The British in 1764 organized two expeditions to combat the uprising. Montgomery and the 17th were on one of these expeditions, commanded by John Bradstreet, that went to Fort Niagara in July, where they were stationed for one month, while Sir William Johnson organized and held a major conference with Natives from around the Great Lakes. The conference drew more than 2,000 natives; Bradstreet's forces stayed there as a deterrent to rumored Native attacks. They then marched to Fort Detroit, which had been subject to a surprise attack earlier, arriving in August. For several weeks, Montgomery stayed at the fort, helping to improve its defenses, and also gaining an understanding of how to interact with the Natives. In September, Bradstreet left Fort Detroit for Sandusky, to meet with the Shawnee and the Delaware; while the 17th remained on garrison duty at Fort Detroit and Fort Michilimackinac, Montgomery, whose leave had been granted, accompanied him. On 3 October, Montgomery and several other officers met with Thomas King, an Oneida chief. King had accompanied a detachment of Bradstreet's men on operations in Illinois; he reported that the Natives were quite hostile there, and had recommended against military action against them. Two days later, at a larger conference with Bradstreet and Iroquois leaders, Bradstreet explained to them that the British would not be attacking the Shawnee and Delaware. Bradstreet then released Montgomery, who traveled first to Johnson Hall and then New York, where he delivered dispatches from Bradstreet to Gage before departing for England.